


Might As Well Call A Whirlwind

by sweetiepie1019



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Black Lightning (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 14:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14022267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetiepie1019/pseuds/sweetiepie1019
Summary: William finds the first kitten stuck under a dumpster during a downpour.  The kitten is bedraggled, black fur sticking up in unflattering spikes all over, making its wide green eyes look huge and alien in its tiny head. He brings it home, dries it off, and presents it to Felicity when she gets home from work.In which the characters of the Arrowverse find themselves getting very similar pets - and having very similar, Marvel inspired ideas for what to name them.





	Might As Well Call A Whirlwind

**Author's Note:**

> So I found out that people were adopting black cats and naming them after Black Panther characters, which I love. I've heard that thanks to superstition, people tend to avoid picking black cats, and it makes me happy to think that might be changing a little after this movie. Also, the movie is freaking awesome, and everyone should love it and honor it accordingly. Then I started thinking about how if Felicity and Cisco got cats, they'd bicker over which of them got to name it Shuri, because they'd both see themselves in a young scientific genius. And then I thought about how much Anissa must have loved the movie, and then a fic just sort of happened.
> 
> FYI - I don't keep the best tab on these shows. I know Arrow pretty well, and BL is new so I keep up, but the last two years I've sort of drifted in and out of the rest. I'll probably end up Netflixing some of them at some point (LoT for sure), but yeah. There's a chance I've missed out on some characters opinions of cats or pets or something, or that I've forgotten some major detail about a character or something since the last time I watched. So a blanket apology for any mistakes.

William finds the first kitten stuck under a dumpster during a downpour. The kitten is bedraggled, black fur sticking up in unflattering spikes all over, making its wide green eyes look huge and alien in its tiny head. It doesn’t even seem to notice its potential discomfort, however. Instead, it repeatedly sticks its paw out to try to bat at the raindrops, tail whipping back and forth excitedly, little mews of frustration and triumph popping out at random.

He brings it home, dries it off, and presents it to Felicity when she gets home from work. She’s delighted, and spends the rest of the night dangling bits of rope in front of the kitten for it to bat at and repeatedly telling it how clever it is.

Oliver is less amused about the scattering of black fur already starting to dust his couch, but it’s impossible to argue with the way the tension has melted off his wife and son, how they light up around the little shedding machine.  
They take it to the vet the next day and the kitten is pronounced a girl. Felicity names it Shuri.

*

When she calls Cisco two weeks later, after another near citywide destructive event in Star City and another near apocalypse in Central, she finds out that after seeing Black Panther, he’d gone straight to his local shelter and adopted a black and gray adolescent. And named her Shuri.

They spend two days angrily texting back and forth about who gets to keep the name when Cisco gets a call from his vet telling him that the shelter had guessed wrong, and that his Shuri is a boy.

After some discussion, Cisco makes matching collars and tags for Lord Shuri and Queen Shuri.

*

Queen Shuri gets too restless in the apartment to be left alone for long, but she adores the bunker. There are so many things for her to knock over, pounce on, and otherwise disrupt. Weapons are now stored in locked drawers, for her own protection.

She’s Felicity’s shadow, but she has a special fondness for Oliver’s things. If he leaves his bow down for too long, he’ll find her gnawing at the string, keeping insolent eyes fixed on him. She’ll crawl in and out of his Arrow jacket and do her best to shred at the leather. Felicity can’t tell if it’s about QS loving Oliver’s scent, or the surreptitious pets and occasional treats that Diggle sneaks her after another episode of joyful vandalism. Either way, she has a whole album of pictures of such incidents on her phone that she texts to William and Thea at random.

Similarly, Lord Shuri lives primarily at Star Labs. Cisco declares him the team mascot and keeps trying to make him a tiny Vibe costume, no matter how many LS wriggles off and then destroys.

As a team mascot, LS is nearly ideal. He can happily chirp at Harry until he coaxes out a smile, he’s just as pleased to see Killer Frost as Caitlin, and when Iris has worked too long at her laptop for a story, he’ll stretch his paws across the keyboard and rumbly purr at her until she gives in and pets him. He isn’t even bothered by Vibe’s portals, although his tendency to wind through Cisco’s legs chatting each time he opens one is unfortunately distracting.

The problem is that he hates speedsters, and Barry in particular. Something about the Speed Force sets his hackles up and poofs up his tail, and soon his spitting yowls of indignation let the team know a speedster’s coming before they appear – a useful warning system when an evil one is making a nuisance of themselves, but hardly a fun welcome home for Barry. He’s tried to make overtures to LS, bring him his favorite treats, come in at a normal speed as often as possible, but the animosity remains. On the plus side, it helps him convince Iris to get a dog, so he can have one pet that doesn’t go murderous at the sight of him.

*

On another Earth, Winn gives Kara a pair of kittens for her birthday, brother and sister, fluffy with patterns of black deep gray. He’s already named them T’Challa and Shuri, and he heavily hints that one of them could be for Alex, if Alex wanted. Alex didn’t, officially, but she does start spending even more time at Kara’s after the cats become a fixture there.

(When Kara tells Felicity and Cisco about her new cats when they see each other months later, they all laugh at the naming coincidence. Felicity and Cisco privately decide to call her cat Shuri the Third; Kara refers to her as Best Shuri.)

T’Challa is the friendly one, greeting every visitor with happy little _murps_ and leg rubs, but he’s extra chatty when it’s Alex at the door. BS (which Kara tells Winn and James they have to stop calling her) is pickier, only interested in the Danvers sisters and Lena. Even with them, she’ll only approach if they aren’t paying attention, sit just out of reach and wait to be petted. If she isn’t petted quickly enough or in the right way, she’ll disappear into the bedroom in a huff and won’t come back for hours.  
But both cats wait patiently by the window when Kara flies out in a hurry and are there to be picked up and cuddled when she returns.

*

Ray is the one to find a litter of abandoned kittens in the 1800s and bring them on board to be fixed up by Gideon. There are four, in various shades of gray, black, tan, and calico – Nakia, M’baku, Killmonger, and Panther.

In spite of Ray’s attempts to make them team pets, Nakia is Sara’s cat, and Panther is Amaya’s. They both prefer to ride around on their chosen humans, draped around their necks or carried in their arms. Nakia is sneaky, wandering around in spaces she shouldn’t be able to go, often appearing without noise or warning on shelves that had seemed to be empty moments ago to leap gracefully onto Sara’s shoulders. Her eyes are the same color as Sara’s, making for a striking and intimidating sight when they both turned their glare on someone. Panther is quiet, preferring to pick a place to watch people from, rumbling lowly when he’s pleased and flattening his ears when annoyed.

If there is a team pet, it’s M’baku. He’s large and fluffy, imposing when he’s sitting still. Not that he does it often. Most of the time, he’s a floofy mass of energy. He flips on his back for belly rubs, jumps into laps for energetic self-petting on people’s stomachs and chins, and when he gets particularly punch drunk, he’ll hide in dark corners and attach himself to the legs of unsuspecting passers-by. Ray says he’s the best cat ever. Nate says it’s almost as good as having a dog. Rory makes threats about what’ll happen if his leg gets bit again, but he hasn’t done anything to back up his threats. Yet.

Killmonger is enamored with Gideon. Whenever she speaks, he runs into the room, making mews of conversation at her. Contrarily, he doesn’t seem put off by her usual lack of form, and in fact seems to prefer it. And when she announces a jump, he sits in the middle of the console, muttering agreements at her. He never falls off or gets rearranged in any way when they shift times, and no one is quite sure how he manages it.

*

Anissa falls in love with her cat immediately. She stumbles upon her on patrol, on a night she’s on her own for once. There’s a couple of kids being shook down by The 100 members in an alley, and the massive, battle-scarred feline has placed herself between them. She’s hissing away at her opponents fearlessly, sounding like she’s scolding them more than anything, and without quite realizing it, Anissa decides this is her cat.

She’s relieved when, once she’s dispatched with the threat, the kids reassure her this isn’t their pet. Not that the cat seems to like her much, apparently just as happy to spit growls at her as she had the gang members. But Anissa’s stubborn enough to outlast God herself, so hours later she’s the proud owner of a wary cat sniffing around her apartment distrustfully. She names her Ayo.

Ayo takes weeks to warm up to her, and much longer to stop trying to kill everyone else she meets. After one particularly close call, Jennifer decides the best revenge for Anissa getting a demon cat is for her to get her own. She begs their dad until finally he relents and takes her to a shelter. She picks out a sleek deep brown female that she names Okoye.

The irony is that Ayo calms down as soon as she meets Okoye. She is still standoffish with anyone but Anissa, but she’s no longer a danger either. They’ll come back from a patrol to find Okoye patiently cleaning Ayo’s ear, the latter looking almost blissful. The cats break it up to go greet their respective humans, Okoye twining elegantly around Jennifer’s outstretched arms, Ayo possessively banging her forehead against Anissa’s.

What they should have probably guessed was that it wouldn’t end that peacefully. The cats learn to get free of the lair somehow and start to follow them on patrol. Their father gives them a stern lecture on responsibility the first time they turn up, not that it changes anything. It’s not that they’re not trying; it’s just that they have preternaturally adept cats.

The first time Ayo shreds up the face of a villain about to kill Jennifer, and Okoye follows suit by ripping at the ankles of the one facing Anissa, it becomes clear that they’re better off just letting them tag along. From then on, Freeland has three vigilantes, and two of those vigilantes come with furry bodyguards.

*

The cats all meet exactly once, during one of the big, worlds-ending crises that occurred from time to time. It’s feline pandemonium. The Shuris band together to try to attack Barry at random intervals, and break three of Oliver’s bows between attacks. T’Challa and M’baku nearly get multiple people killed by trying to play with them at the wrong times. Ayo and Okoye get agitated and become dangerous to anyone who looked at Jennifer and Anissa wrong, regardless of team affiliation. Killmonger makes it impossible to hear Gideon’s diagnostics over his yelling. Then Nakia and Panther leads them all out of the Waverider at the worst moment, leading to a post-mission weeklong cat hunt across time and multiple universes.

Queen Shuri is the last to be found in the same place William has discovered her the first time. She’s preening over four multicolored kittens.

In spite of everyone saying that ten cats are quite enough cats for one superhero conglomerate, Diggle, Iris, Caitlin, and Wally all find themselves with one of their very own.

They all start shelling large amounts of cash out to catsitters.


End file.
